Is Joe Weider dead now as well?

[BGryphon18]

Just saw a post on FB from a bodybuilder friend of mine in Oregon and wanted to see if anyone here could confirm: Has Joe Weider passed away as well?

[TheMM]

I haven't been able to find anything personally. Could be missing it though.

[Aardvark2]

Yes, he has passed away, right after M&F did a big tribute issue for him. They have it confirmed on their website. A huge loss for our fitness community.

[nnnrg]

Wow. Well, for whatever downsides Mr. Weider brought, he was perhaps THE major force in making bodybuilding into a mainstream, accepted sport. Rest in peace.

[RPM]

He sure lived a full life. 93 years? A wonderful testament to health and fitness. His influence in popularizing bodybuilding was on the level of Arnold. RIP good sir.

[raven79]

He is the perfect example of why bodybuilding CAN be a good thing. Living 93 years is quite impressive and he was highly successful at it too. I realize the sport isn't as big as it once was, but he was one of the reasons it reached such popularity.

[Yachirobi]

Bodybuilding was a lot different in Joe Weider's heyday. I hope we can find a way back to that. There's a reason he lived to his 90s while so many greats today die far too young.

Good bye, Mr. Weider. Thank you.

[nnnrg]

Originally Posted by RPM

He sure lived a full life. 93 years? A wonderful testament to health and fitness. His influence in popularizing bodybuilding was on the level of Arnold. RIP good sir.

Arguably his influence was greater than Arnold's since he actually sponsored Arnold coming to America, along with Franco Columbu. He and Ben Weider were the behind-the-scenes people who pushed the sport.

There were others who helped, of course: Jack LaLanne, who died last year at 96 years of age, http://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-we...ness-superhero, (at 52 he schooled a 21 year old Arnold with his bodyweight workout of pushups, situps and chin-ups, and at age 70 he towed a flotilla of rowboats a mile through chilly water while shackled at wrists and feet: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id...een+mary&hl=en)

Weider was in pretty good shape too. His brother Ben (who didn't maintain his bodybuilding lifestyle as effectively) died suddenly at age 85 in 2008.

[Mdlftr]

Originally Posted by nnnrg

Arguably his influence was greater than Arnold's since he actually sponsored Arnold coming to America, along with Franco Columbu. He and Ben Weider were the behind-the-scenes people who pushed the sport.

There were others who helped, of course: Jack LaLanne, who died last year at 96 years of age, http://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-we...ness-superhero, (at 52 he schooled a 21 year old Arnold with his bodyweight workout of pushups, situps and chin-ups, and at age 70 he towed a flotilla of rowboats a mile through chilly water while shackled at wrists and feet: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id...een+mary&hl=en)

Weider was in pretty good shape too. His brother Ben (who didn't maintain his bodybuilding lifestyle as effectively) died suddenly at age 85 in 2008.

"...died suddenly at age 85...."

Yep, that certainly was a surprise!

Seriously, props to both of them. While they were not always considered to be the fairest people around when it came to business practices, and many bodybuilders complained that it was "the Weider way or the highway," they did do a lot to promote the sport of bodybuilding.

Other than Arnold, the general public doesn't have many bodybuilders they recognize as individuals. There's that guy directing traffic in the Geico insurance ad, but even I don't know what his name is! Here's hoping a new "star" emerges in bodybuilding that can get the general public excited about it again.

Mdlftr

[Bull]

All this praise for Joe Weider has been making me sick. He ruthlessly exploited "his" athletes, while paying them next to nothing either through prize money or sponsorships. His system of contests was rigged so his cronies got to produce them, and made no sense in terms of regional distribution or quality. The judging has always been terrible, again because only his friends and loyal suck-ups were allowed to be judges. His supplements were cheap shit until competition forced him to improve them. When he realized that drug testing was going to have an impact on his bottom line, he got rid of it, murdering who knows how many men. He elevated that sociopath Arnold to a place where he could do real harm. How many boys had their moral compasses destroyed by emulating Arnold's win-at-any-cost attitude? And look at the tyrannical way he ran the WBF and IFBB, throwing out anyone who dared to compete in another federation's contests. He created an illegal monopoly, basically.

So no, I don't mourn the bastard's death. Now that he is gone, maybe bodybuilders can create a federation that actually caters to THEIR needs and makes it possible for them to make a living.

[suma]

well...always nice to hear both sides.

[Mdlftr]

Originally Posted by Bull

All this praise for Joe Weider has been making me sick. He ruthlessly exploited "his" athletes, while paying them next to nothing either through prize money or sponsorships. His system of contests was rigged so his cronies got to produce them, and made no sense in terms of regional distribution or quality. The judging has always been terrible, again because only his friends and loyal suck-ups were allowed to be judges. His supplements were cheap shit until competition forced him to improve them. When he realized that drug testing was going to have an impact on his bottom line, he got rid of it, murdering who knows how many men. He elevated that sociopath Arnold to a place where he could do real harm. How many boys had their moral compasses destroyed by emulating Arnold's win-at-any-cost attitude? And look at the tyrannical way he ran the WBF and IFBB, throwing out anyone who dared to compete in another federation's contests. He created an illegal monopoly, basically.

So no, I don't mourn the bastard's death. Now that he is gone, maybe bodybuilders can create a federation that actually caters to THEIR needs and makes it possible for them to make a living.

Bull,
Wow, you really raised a lot of information about Joe Weider that I actually knew, but had forgotten about. Your characterization of Arnold as a "sociopath" is not off the mark, now that I think about it. I guess that if you live long enough, you become celebrated for being famous and living a long time, rather than for exactly whatever good and bad things you did which made you famous.

Thanks for the balance.

Mdlftr

[nnnrg]

Bull, that's why I said "for whatever else" ... I know he wasn't a saint. There were others who were, but who didn't have as much influence. And don't engage in hyperbole. Murder is way too strong a word for 'allowing men to use drugs that might have caused problems for them.' At no point did Joe force any of the guys who died from misuse of diuretics to use them incorrectly. Nobody has died from steroid use as such, by the way. Although perhaps you know of someone who died from a counterfeit, a contaminated drug, or an animal drug being misused on humans, or from an infection from improper sanitary conditions.

The politics of bodybuilding, the psychology of the people who get into any extreme sport, are hardly something to blame on any one person. In fact, the only thing I really feel justified to blame Joe Weider for, is that he was a hypocrite about sexuality, that he lied about the issues around drug use rather than fighting for more reasonable laws, and that he allowed that terrible statue of himself pumped up past the size he actually achieved, to be used as the trophy for the Olympia.

The politics side of things is much more Ben Weider's fault than anything Joe ever did. He was the one who ran the business side.

mdlifter ... By "died suddenly" I mean "Ben Weider was not suffering from any chronic illness or other disease that anyone knew about" but he definitely LOOKED 85, while his brother Joe looked like he was in his 70s when he died.